i) create EU database
to target "suspected" protestors and bar them from
entering a country where a protest is planned

ii) create EU database of all "foreigners" to remove
third country nationals who have not left within the "prescribed
time frame" (full
report as pdf file)

The Council of the European Union (the 15 EU governments) are
discussing plans to create two new dedicated databases on the
Schengen Information System (SIS). The first database would cover
public order and protests and lead to:

"Barring potentially dangerous persons from participating
in certain events [where the person is] notoriously
known by the police forces for having committed recognised facts
of public order disturbance"

"Targeted" suspects
would be tagged with an "alert" on the SIS and barred
from entry the country where the protest or event was taking
place.

The second database would be
a register of all third country nationals in the EU who
will be tagged with an "alert" if they overstay their
visa or residence permit - this follows a call by the German
government for the creation of a "centralised register".

Both of these new databases
are being put forward under the post 11 September "Anti-terrorism
roadmap" (item 45
on the version of 15.11.01, to "Improve input of alerts
into the SIS").

In its report following the protests in Gothenburg and Genoa
on 13 July the Justice and Home Affairs Council agreed to the
creation of national databases of "trouble-makers"
but put off the decision to create a centralised EU-wide database,
see: Statewatch report: EU plans
the surveillance of protestors

This initiative comes in the context of the debate over the
definition of terrorism to be agreed by the Justice and Home
Affairs Council on 6-7 December. The draft
on the table would embrace protests and protestors in
the definition of terrorism.

Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch, commented:

"After the protests in Gothenburg the EU governments
adopted far-reaching plans to put protestors under surveillance.
After 11 September the European Commission proposed a definition
of terrorism which also extended to protests.

Now under the EU's "Anti-terrorist roadmap" we
have the frightening prospect that details of suspected protestors
and dissenters will be held by the Schengen Information System
on one centralised, computerised EU-wide database and all "foreigners"
in the EU held on another - and both are to be the subject of
"targeted" action and/or surveillance. Protestors and
"foreigners" are to be targeted as representing primary
"threats" to the internal security of the EU."

The full Statewatch report with more details on "foreigners"
registers and the European Commission's Communication on illegal
immigration: Full report - the "enemy
within" II (pdf file)

SIS to hold database
on protestorsThe Conclusions of the special Justice
and Home Affairs Council on 13 July - after Gothenburg but before
Genoa - said that:

1. Police and intelligence officers should: "identify
persons or groups likely to pose a threat to public order and
security"

2. All legal and technical "possibilities" should
be used for the: "more structured exchanges of data on
violent troublemakers on the basis of national files". At
that time the Council (EU governments) were divided 8-7 against
the creation of a "European database of troublemakers".

3. All legal possibilities: "should be used to prevents
such individuals.. from going to the country hosting the event".
The criteria for preventing people attending protests is
to be "serious reasons" (in the eyes of police and
security agencies) to believe that: "such persons are
travelling with the intention of organising, provoking or participating
in serious disturbances of public law and order".

"Example: A known violent football fan can be barred
from attending a football match, if there are indications that
the person might cause disorders before, during or after the
game. The measure could be extended to violent demonstrators
as well."

The overall purpose would be to:

"Limit the risk of public disorder during a sports,
social, cultural or political event by targeting known individuals,
resulting in increased internal security in the Schengen territory"

The targeting of "known individuals" will be based
on information gathered at national level (by police and security
agencies) and passed on to the SIS in Strasbourg. The database
of suspected "troublemakers" held on the SIS will then
be accessed by police and internal security agencies when there
is an assumed "threat" for a particular event in that
country. This would deny people the right of free movement
in the EU and the right to protest. However, the placing
of an "alert" on the SIS that a "targeted"
person is a suspected "troublemaker" could be accessed
- during a specific event - and used to stop them travelling
for other purposes such as visiting friends or to go on holiday
- it would constitute a quasi criminal record. Moreover,
the construction at national level of a register of "known
individuals" means that quite ordinary and everyday political
activity of groups and organisations will have to be placed under
regular surveillance.

German government calls
for EU-wide "foreigners" databaseIn the immediate aftermath to the 11 September attacks
in the USA the German government put forward far-reaching proposals
to the meeting of the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council on
27-28 September. These included a proposal that at the national
level "each Member State should maintain centralised
population registers and centralised registers storing data on
third-country nationals present in the territory of the Union"
and that there should be established:

"a European central register of third-country nationals
present within the territory of the Union"

Only two EU states have registers of "foreigners"
(third-country nationals): Germany and Luxembourg
(see: The enemy within II for
full analysis)

It might have been expected that such a far-reaching, and
potentially dangerous, idea would have been noted and dismissed
as extreme but is was not, it re-appeared on the measures to
be taken post-11 September under the Council's "Anti-terrorism
roadmap".

SIS to hold database on
"foreigners" in the EUThe 20
September Conclusions of the Justice and Home Affair
Council and the regular updates to the Anti-terrorism
roadmap contain a number of measures and new "operational"
practices which imply a fundamental changes on external borders
controls and control of "foreigners" within the EU
- as did the US/Bush letter
of demands on the EU.

The German government proposal for a EU register of third-country
nationals (based on similar national registers) has been taken
up by the Belgium, the current EU Presidency, who are proposing
to amend the rules for Articles 96 and 99 (public order, see
above) governing "alerts" on the Schengen Information
System (SIS).

It is proposing to amend Article 96 so that:

data of persons entering the Schengen area are introduced
and that it is checked whether they have left the area after
the expiration of their visa or permit. In case the person does
not leave the area within the prescribed time frame, an alert
could automatically be raised under a new paragraph of Art. 96.
The data of the person should not be visible during his authorised
stay and would have to be deleted after the person left the Schengen
area.

The official logic is spelt out as "checks at entry and
leaving the Schengen Area for citizens of third countries"
and:

"When the person does not leave the area within the
prescribed time, an alert is automatically inserted in the SIS"

Overall this would mean adding to the existing categories
held under Article 96 (people to be refused entry on grounds
of public order and national security or against who there is
a deportation or expulsion order or prohibition on entry) "alerts"
for people who overstay their visa period (for work or just visiting)
or their residence permit period. In order to do this a database
has to be set up at national level of all visas issued and all
residence permits and this data sent to the central collection
on the SIS - this data would not be "visible" during
the period of "authorised stay" and would be deleted
when the person has left the Schengen area. If the person failed
to leave the "Schengen Area" within the proscribed
time-limit an "alert" would be flagged against their
name as a illegally present person. National data which is placed
on the central SIS system is then accessible through thousands
of terminals (especially police and immigration) across the Schengen
countries. This would, in effect, be a European central register
of third-country nationals present within the territory of the
Union.

Source: Note from Belgian delegation to
SIS Working Party (EU/Iceland and Norway Mixed Committee), Changes
for extensions on art. 96 and 99 of the Schengen Convention,
12813/01, SIS 91 COMIX 676, 15.10.01.

Under pre-11 September plans access to the SIS is already to
be widened to immigration, driving licensing and other law enforcement
agencies and its capacity increased to allow the non-Schengen
countries and accession candidates to participate (see Statewatch,
vol 11 no 1).

Who is on the SIS?
One of the greatest problem for people
who are put onto a database in the Schengen Information System
is that they are not told that their names are on record, that
is, until they attempt to travel (if they are on the protestors
database) or when they are detained for removal from the EU (if
they are a third country national whose time limit has expired).
For a person to get a name removed from the SIS is extremely
difficult. Some years ago two football fans, falsely entered
a list of suspected football "hooligans", found it
took years and lengthy appeals and procedures to get their wrongly
recorded names off the list - and from other lists on which their
names were held: see: Football fans on
the files

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